Mick's GeekBlog

Death and loss

Posted by Mick on January 28, 2010 – 5:17 pm

It’s been a day for bad news. Let’s review:

Disney has officially closed Miramax. Say what you will about Miramax and the Weinsteins, they changed the landscape for film in the United States. Did they cut too much from foreign films they distributed? Probably. Did they bury films from film makers who wouldn’t do things their way (see Jarmusch’s Dead Man)? Probably. Did they bring foreign films to American audiences that might not have otherwise seen them? Most definitely. For all the “bad” that they may have done, they exposed many Americans to a type of film they wouldn’t have ever seen. Maybe some of the films they were seeing were watered down, maybe the subtitles had been scrubbed of political subtext, maybe the editing process was a bit heavy handed. Some might even go as far as to say the Weinsteins were bullies. And they were. Still, Miramax changed the face of film in the USA, and for that we can all be a little sad at it’s passing.

Howard Zinn has passed away. Zinn was a noted historian who wasn’t afraid to challebge the status quo on any issue. He was active in the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements in the USA, and was perhaps best known for his A People’s History series.

J.D. Salinger has passed away. If you don’t know who he is, he would probably like it that way.

The saddest news of all, for me anyway, was the passing of Zelda Rubinstein, best known as Tangina Barrons in the Poltergeist films. You might also remember her from TV’s Picket Fences, or one of her numerous guest appearances on television. She was also one of the first celebrities to speak publicly about the importance of safe sex in 1984, as HIV/AIDS was just beginning to get headlines. I would like to say Goodbye to Zelda by sharing one of her best known quotes.

Cross over children. All are welcome. All welcome. Go into the Light. There is peace and serenity in the Light.

Godspeed, Zelda. Go into the Light, and find peace.

And I just found out that my supervisor, who I really like, has been let go. No, I don’t know the details, and no, I don’t really want to know all the details. Sometimes it’s better to stay ignorant and thereby stay out of it. I just want to come in, do a good job, and leave. I want to avoid the drama. I desperately want to like my job, the people I work with, and the people I work for. But sometimes it’s hard. It’s really hard. Demoralizing is a word that would fit this situation. My morale is very low right now. I don’t like that.

All this talk of death and loss and Harvey Weinstein has made me sad. We need something happy. How about this? A dog was seen on an ice floe, floating down the Vistula River in Poland, which is experiencing an extremely cold winter with night time temperatures falling as low as -34 C. That’s -30 for those of you who are more familiar with the Fahrenheit scale. Firemen were unable to rescue him, and he floated on down the river and into the Baltic Sea. A Polish ship saw him, now 18 miles from shore, and they rescued him. I find that very heart-warming.